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The story
The airline was established on November 17, 1962, and started operations in 1963 as Líneas Aéreas Paraguayas. Between 1995 and 1996 the airline operated as a subsidiary of the Ecuadorian airline SAETA under the name LAPSA Air Paraguay. LAPSA ceased operations in 1996.
On September 1, 1996, Aerolíneas Paraguayas (a subsidiary of TAM Linhas Aéreas) purchased 80% of the majority shares of LAPSA and both airlines were merged under the name TAM – Transportes Aéreos del Mercosur. This merge marked the birth of a new airline, heir to LAP and LAPSA. On October 6, 1996 TAM Mercosur was sold to TAM Linhas Aéreas. At that time it used two Fokker 100 jets to cover regional destinations.
In March 2008, following a branding strategy, the name TAM Mercosur was dropped and the airline adopted a corporate identity identical to its Brazilian owner. However, its corporate structure remained the same. The airline was rebranded as LATAM Paraguay following the merger and creation of the LATAM Airlines Group and the subsequent rebranding of its member airlines. As of May 2018, LATAM owned 94.98% and the Paraguayan Government owned 5.02% of the shares.
From Wikipedia’s article on LATAM Airlines Paraguay, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4